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'Focused' KoMets throttle La Crescent

Wed, 09/13/2017 - 6:00pmadmin

By:

Chris Schad DCI Sports Editor

The stereotype in the game of football is that most of the players on the eld are made of a certain kind of warrior mentality. In films, that depiction is usually seen with a character running around the locker room screaming to inspire his teammates or slamming his head against a locker to psyche themselves up for a Friday night.

Yet, through the first couple games of the season, the KoMets haven’t shown the outgoing intensity and instead have had the look of a more cerebral team as they picked up victories in their first two games with their latest coming in a 40-0 win over La Crescent last week.

“We don’t have a lot of rah-rah guys,” Threinen admitted. “But that’s just how a team can be. Sometimes, they’re just more focused than anything and I think that’s the kind of team we have right now.”

Focus is something that can be lost on a long bus ride such as the two-hour trek to La Crescent the KoMets embarked on for this game. However, K-M came out on fire in all phases of the game driving down effortlessly for a 32 yard run by Matt Winkle to open the scoring. After that, a blocked punt would lead to a Robby Horsman eight yard run to extend the lead to 14-0 in the first four minutes of the game. “It’s always a challenge to get them off the bus and ready to go, but we came out really well.” Threinen saidof the opening drives.

“We didn’t do anything special and they responded well. It didn’t seem like we had a lot of electricity, but they rose up to the challenge.”

While the KoMets’ defense would suffocate the Lancers by allowing just 73 yards on the evening, Winkle was the engine on the offensive side, running for 166 of the KoMets’ 343 yards on the ground and scoring his second touchdown on a 25-yard dash for K-M to have a 21-0 advantage after the first quarter.

“Our defense really stuck with focusing on their keys,” Threinen observed. “We’ve really focused on those pre-snap tendencies and reads and it paid off. We weren’t perfect, but we did well enough.”

K-M would spend the rest of the evening comfortably as Cade Spreiter would score on a two-yard run for a 27-0 halftime score and Winkle would earn his third touchdown of the night with a 15-yard run to really open things up. Nick Ranvek would add a pick- six late in the third for the nal 40-0 margin.

With the Lancers in the rear view mirror, the KoMets will look ahead to a rivalry game this week as they take the much shorter bus ride to Byron. With the game likely to be a more physical approach, Threinen believes that his focused team will need a more violent approach in order to turn their 2-0 start into a 3-0 start.

“We want them to be more violent with their actions when running the ball, getting off blocks and making a tackle,” Thrienen explained. “Football is a violent game and I thought we were a little passive at times. We just need to be a little more violent and getting their hands off of us and getting our hands on them.”

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